Witnessing the Anthropocene: A Reflection on Joëlle Flumet’s Bronze Chimpanzees
- SITE_SPECIFIC
- Nov 6
- 5 min read
Updated: Nov 11
Several torches, anchored in a circle, illuminate Joëlle Flumet’s cast bronze chimpanzee group, Anthropozän, first presented on the night of 24 November 2024 at Schulanlage Freilager in Zürich. The cool night air condenses into small clouds with each breath. The lifelike eyes of the chimpanzees, painted and sealed with automotive lacquer¹ animate the sculptures, inviting viewers into a contemplative encounter with nature and our ancestors. Commissioned as a Kunst und Bau project, the sculptural group, playing and roaming on the school’s green field, introduces an unexpected note into the urban landscape.
As the title “Anthropozän” (translated as Anthropocene - “the age of humans”) evokes, it is the footprint of humans and human-centered activities — whether sleeping in the city that night, walking near the chimpanzee group, or waking in another corner of the world the next morning — that drives habitat loss and environmental change, propelling chimpanzee populations toward extinction. Humans, numerous and profoundly affecting the planet with increasing speed since the onset of the Anthropocene in the mid-18th century, are both witnesses and agents of habitat loss, contributing to the expansion of human infrastructure that fragments environments and increases the risk of extinction.
Flumet, a conceptual artist whose distinctive approach involves digital drawings, realizes the bronze sculptures in collaboration with a specialised enterprise: clay models are created from her drawings, then molded and finally cast in bronze. Bronze casting is a technique that resonates across history, carrying spiritual and cultural memory for millennia — from early ritual bronzes in West Asia and the Ancient Near East, dating to around 2500 BCE, to contemporary global art practices, bronze conveys the breadth of human history and the emergence of complex civilizations. Flumet’s Anthropozän resonates across multiple histories. The first bronze artifacts, which have survived millennia and bear witness to the Bronze Age and many subsequent eras, continue to convey humanity’s perpetual need to create toward spiritual, transcendent, and natural forces. Her work also evokes our relationship to primates, our closest biological relatives, who, unlike us, continue to exist as interconnected and vulnerable beings on planet Earth.
At the time this article is being written in 2025, the world is processing the enormous loss of Dr. Jane Goodall, English primatologist, anthropologist, activist, and pioneering woman in primate ethology. Active in the field study of chimpanzees for over 60 years and advocating for the protection of our planet and its living forms, her vast heritage includes preservation efforts, the creation of animal sanctuaries, reforestation projects in Africa, and ethical work for the protection of animal welfare.
Her last words emphasize the importance of finding hope in our mission and in our existence as the progeny of the first primates who walked the Earth millions of years ago.
“There is something in your life that makes you important on this Earth.” (...) (...) I want to make sure that you all understand that each and every one of you has a role to play. (...) I want you to know that, whether or not you find that role you’re supposed to play, your life does matter, and that every single day you live, you make a difference in the world. And you get to choose the difference that you make.I want you to understand that we are part of the natural world. And even today, when the planet is dark, there still is hope. Don’t lose hope.(...)if you want to save the planet for future generations, your grandchildren, their grandchildren—then think about the actions you take each day.Because, multiplied a million, a billion times, even small actions will make for great change.”
October 3, 2025, Dr. Jane Goodall²
Art is one of the most essential ways we recognize ourselves as human. It is one of the first gifts through which our consciousness found expression, reminding us of our togetherness as a species and of our shared kinship to the same family, Homo sapiens. This ancestral act of creation signals the advent of reflective consciousness in our species, engaging ancient regions of the brain such as the limbic system and amygdala, where emotion and memory converge to shape our sense of belonging and shared meaning. As psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk notes, “Together the reptilian brain and limbic system make up (…) the ‘emotional brain,’”' illustrating how emotion, memory, and social bonding are deeply intertwined. The reptilian brain, the most ancient part of the brain, is shared with our closest relatives, the chimpanzees, both reptilian and limbic circuits similarly guide instinct, emotion, social bonding. This emotional grounding, originating in our most primal brain systems, shapes the way we create and experience art.
Art, a receptacle for the entangled histories of our species, is a fundamental aspect of humanity. The one that is transcending eras, faiths, and geographies, yet resisting full inscription or articulation. It is a faculty born from the affective mesh of being together. Without this affective component, the shared network of emotion and interaction, these primal brain systems cannot fully evolve or function. It is a resonance of molecules that slips beyond rational grasp, where humans, other animals, and the natural world are co-constitutive participants in a shared, fragile, and sacred worlding. In this space, we are not isolated agents but threads in the ongoing weave of life, carrying forward purposes that are at once archaic, irreducibly collective, and yet mysterious. Our purpose on the planet, as Dr. J. Goodall reminds us, may not always be immediately clear. Perhaps it will become apparent only after a lifetime of steps, or even billions of steps. Yet we must not lose hope.
Anthropozän, then, serves both as a reminder and a call to action. Flumet’s bronze chimpanzees stand as still witnesses to the human role in ecological change, and the potential for meaningful actions to shape a more sustainable, compassionate future. The dream of a world where art may help reveal “the depths of ourselves, expressed, suppressed and repressed, the fragility of life and the human condition, and our connection with the world we inhabit⁴”reminds us that consciousness and ethical responsibility are intertwined.
Text by Giulia Rossini
Address:
Freilager School Complex
Flurstrasse 120
8047 Zürich
Switzerland
Commissioned by:
Kunst und Bau Zurich
Notes:
“Ein wichtiges Detail des Auftrags waren die Augen. Sie sollten möglichst naturnah sein, wie bei einem ausgestopften Tier – oder, noch besser, einem lebenden. Statt Glasaugen haben die Bronze-Schimpans*innen nun jedoch gemalte und mit Autolack versiegelte Augen.”- Daniel Morgenthaler, Joëlle Flumet, «Anthropozän», 2024
Dr. Jane Goodall, speech delivered on October 3, 2025.
Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma (New York: Penguin Books, 2014), 56.
Michael D. Higgins, Imagination and the Transformation of Politics, speech delivered at the Opening of the Exhibition In the Line of Beauty, IMMA (Irish Museum of Modern Art), Dublin, July 2013.
